The Seven Principles of Man · 1

PREFACE Few words are needed in sending this little book out into the world. It is the first of a series of Manuals designed to meet the public demand a simple exposition of Theosophical teachings. Some have complained that our literature is at once too abstruse, too technical, and too expensive for the ordinary reader, and it is our hope that the present series may succeed in supplying what is a very real want. Theosophy is not only for the learned; it is for all. It may be that among those who in these little books catch their first glimpse of its teachings, there may be a few who will be led by them to penetrate more deeply into its philosophy, its science, and its religion, facing its abstruser problems with the student's zeal and the neophyte's ardour. But these Manuals are not written for the eager student whom no initial difficulties can daunt; they are written for the busy men and women of the work-a-day world and seek to make plain some of the great truths that render life easier to bear and death easier to face. Written by servants of the Masters who are the Elder Brothers of our race, they can have no other object than to serve our fellowmen.

ANNIE BESANT

Inquirers attracted to Theosophy by its central doctrine of the brotherhood of man, and by the hopes which it holds out of wider knowledge and of spiritual growth, are apt to be repelled when they make their first attempt to come into closer acquaintance with it, by the, to them, strange and puzzling names which flow glibly from the lips of Theosophists in conference assembled.They hear a tangle of Âtma-Buddhi, Kâma-Manas, Triad, Devachan, and what not, and feel at once that for them Theosophy is far too abstruse a study. Yet they might have become very good Theosophists, had not their initial enthusiasm been quenched with the douche of Sanskrit terms. In the present manual the smoking flax shall be more tenderly treated, and but few Sanskrit names shall be flung in the face of the enquirer. As a matter of fact, the use of these terms has become general among Theosophists because the English language has no equivalents for them, and a long and clumsy sentence has to be used in their stead if the idea is to be conveyed at all. The initial trouble of learning the names has been preferred to the continued trouble of using roundabout descriptive phrases – “Kâma”, for instance, being shorter and more precise than “the passional and emotional part of our nature”. [Page 2]

Man according to the Theosophical teaching is a sevenfold being, or, in the usual phrase, has a septenary constitution. Putting it in another way, man’s nature has seven aspects, may be studied from seven different points of view, is composed of seven principles. The clearest and best way of all in which to think of man is to regard him as one, the Spirit or True Self; this belongs to the highest region of the universe, and is universal, the same for all; it is a ray of God, a spark from the divine fire. This is to become an individual, reflecting the divine perfection, a son that grows into the likeness of his father. For this purpose the Spirit, or true Self, is clothed in garment after garment, each garment belonging to a definite region of the universe, and enabling the Self to come into contact with that region, gain knowledge of it, and work in it. It thus gains experience, and all its latent potentialities are gradually drawn out into active powers. These garments, or sheaths, are distinguishable from each other both theoretically and practically. If a man be looked at clairvoyantly each is distinguishable by the eye, and they are separable each from each either during physical life or at death, according to the nature of any particular sheath. Whatever words may be used, the fact remains the same – that he is essentially sevenfold, an evolving being, part of whose nature has already been manifested, part remaining latent at present, so far as the vast majority of humankind is concerned. Man’s consciousness is able to function through as many of these aspects as have been already evolved in him into activity.

This evolution, during the present cycle of human development, takes place on five out of seven planes of [Page 3 ] nature. The two higher planes – the sixth and seventh – will not be reached, save in the most exceptional cases, by men of this humanity in the present cycle, and they may therefore be left out of sight for our present purpose.As, however, some confusion has arisen as to the seven planes through differences of nomenclature, two diagrams are given at the end of this treatise showing the seven planes as they exist in our division of the universe, in correspondence with the vaster planes of the universe as a whole, and also the subdivision of the five into seven, as they are represented in some of our literature. A“plane” is merely a condition, a stage, a state; so that we might describe man as fitted by his nature, when that nature is fully developed, to exist consciously in seven different conditions, or seven different stages, in seven different states; or technically, on seven different planes of being. To take an easily verified illustration: a man may be conscious on the physical plane, that is, in his physical body, feeling hunger and thirst, and pain of a blow or cut. But let the man be a soldier in the heat of battle, and his consciousness will be centred in his passions and emotions, and he may suffer a wound without knowing it, his consciousness being away from the physical plane and acting on the plane of passions and emotions: when the excitement is over, consciousness will pass back to the physical, and he will “feel” the pain of his wound. Let the man be a philosopher, and as he ponders over some knotty problem he will lose all consciousness of bodily wants, of emotions, of love and hatred; his consciousness will have passed to the plane of intellect, he will be “abstracted”, i.e.., drawn away from considerations pertaining to his bodily life, and fixed on the plane [Page 4 ] of thought. Thus may a man live on these several planes, in these several conditions, one part or another of his nature being thrown into activity at any given time; and an understanding of what man is, of his nature, his powers, his possibilities, will be reached more easily and assimilated more usefully if he is studied along these clearly defined lines, that if he be left without analysis, a mere confused bundle of qualities and states.

It has also been found convenient, having regard to man’s mortal and immortal life, to put these seven principles into two groups – one containing the three higher principles and therefore called the Triad, the other containing the four lower, and therefore called the Quaternary. The Triad is the deathless part of man’s nature, the “spirit” and soul of Christian terminology; the Quaternary is the mortal part, the “body”, of Christianity.This division into body, soul and spirit is used by St. Paul, and is recognised in all careful Christian philosophy, although generally ignored by the mass of Christian people. In ordinary parlance soul and body make up the man, and the words soul and spirit are used interchangeably, with much confusion of thought as the result.This looseness is fatal to any clear view of the constitution of man, and the Theosophist may well appeal to the Christian philosopher as against the causal Christian non-thinker if it be urged that he is making distinctions difficult to be grasped. No philosophy worthy of the name can be stated even in the most elementary fashion without making some demand on the intelligence and the attention of the would be learner, and carefulness in the use of terms is a condition of all knowledge.[Page 5]

PRINCIPLE - 1 - THE DENSE PHYSICAL BODY

The dense physical body of man is called the first of his seven principles, as it is certainly the most obvious. Built of material molecules, in the generally accepted sense of the term – with its five organs of sensation - the five senses - its organs of locomotion, its brain and nervous system, its apparatus for carrying on the various functions necessary for its continued existence, there is little to be said about this physical body in so slight a sketch as this of the constitution of man. Western science is almost ready to accept the Theosophical view that the human organism consists of innumerable “lives”, which build up the cells. H.P.Blavatsky says on this: “Science has never yet gone so far as to assert with the Occult doctrine that our bodies, as well as those of animals, plants, and stones, are themselves altogether built up of such beings [bacteria, etc.]: which, with the exception of the larger species, no microscope can detect ….The physical and chemical constituents of all being found to be identical, chemical science may well say that there is no difference between the matter which composes the ox and that which forms the man. But the Occult doctrine is far more explicit. It says: Not only the chemical compounds are the same, but the same infinitesimal invisible lives compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain and the daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant and [Page 6 ] of the tree which shelters him from the sun. Each particle – whether you call it organic or inorganic – is a life. Every atom and molecule in the universe is both life-giving and death-giving to such forms (Secret Doctrine, vol. I, p. 281, new edition). The microbes thus “build up the material body and its cells”, under the constructive energy of vitality – a phrase that will be explained when we come to deal with “life”, as the Third Principle, and with these microbes as part of it. When the “life” is no longer supplied the microbes “are left to run riot as destructive agents”, and they break up and disintegrate the cells which they built, and so the body goes to pieces.

The purely physical consciousness is the consciousness of the cells and the molecules. The selective action of the cells, taking from the blood what they need, rejecting what they do not need, is an instance of this self consciousness. The process goes on without the help of our consciousness or volition. Again that which is called by physiologists unconscious memory is the memory of the physical consciousness, unconscious to us indeed, until we have learned to transfer our brain consciousness there. What we feel is not what the cells feel. The pain of a wound is felt by the brain-consciousness, acting, as before said, on the physical plane; but the consciousness of the molecule, as of the aggregation of molecules we call cells, leads it to hurry to the repair of the damaged tissues – actions of which the brain is unconscious – and its memory makes it repeat the same act again and again, even when it has become unnecessary. Hence cicatrices on wounds, scars, callosities, etc. The student may find many details on this subject in physiological treatises.[Page 7] The death of the dense physical body occurs when the withdrawal of the controlling life-energy leaves the microbes to go their own way, and the many lives, no longer co-ordinated, separate from each other and scatter the particles of the cells of “the man of dust”, and what we call decay sets in. The body becomes a whirlpool of unrestrained, unregulated lives, and its form, which resulted from their correlation, is destroyed by their exuberant individual energy. Death is but an aspect of life, and the destruction of one material form is but a prelude to building up of another.[Page 8]

PRINCIPLE -2- THE ETHERIC DOUBLE

The Linga Sharira, the astral body, the ethereal body, the fluidic body, the double, the wraith, the döppelganger, the astral man – such are a few of the many names which have been given to the second principle in man’s constitution. The best name is the Etheric Double, because this term designates the second principle only, suggesting its constitution and appearance: whereas the other names have been used somewhat generally to describe bodies formed of some more subtle matter than that which affects our physical senses, without regard to the question whether other principles were or were not involved in their construction. I shall therefore use this name throughout.

The etheric double is formed of matter rarer or more subtle than that which is perceptible to our five senses, but still matter belonging to the physical plane, to which its functioning is confined. It is the state of physical matter which is just beyond our “solid, liquid and gas”, which form the dense portions of the physical plane.

This etheric double is the exact double or counterpart of the dense physical body to which it belongs, and is separable from it, although unable to go very far away therefrom. In normal healthy human beings the separation is a matter of difficulty, but in persons [Page 9] known as physical or materialising mediums, the ethereal double slips out without any great effort. When separated from the dense body it is visible to the clairvoyant as an exact replica thereof, united to it by a slender thread. So close is the physical union between the two that an injury inflicted on the etheric double appears as a lesion on the dense body, a fact known under the name of repercussion. A. d’Assier, in his well known work – translated by Colonel Olcott, the President-Founder of the Theosophical Society, under the title of Posthumous Humanity – gives a number of cases (see p. 51-57) in which this repercussion took place.

Separation of the etheric double from the dense body is generally accompanied by a considerable decrease in vitality in the latter, the double becoming more vitalised as the energy in the dense body diminishes. Colonel Olcott says (page 63):

“ When the double is projected by a trained expert, even the body seems torpid, and the mind in a ‘brown study’ or dazed state; the eyes are lifeless in expression, the heart and lung actions feeble, and often the temperature much lowered. It is very dangerous to make any sudden noise or burst into the room, under such circumstances; for the double, being by instantaneous reaction drawn back into the body, the heart convulsively contracts, and death may even be caused.”

In the case of Emilie Sagée (quoted on page 62-65) the girl was noticed to look pale and exhausted when the double was visible: “the more distinct the double and more material in appearance, the really material person was effectively wearied, suffering and languid; when on the contrary, the appearance of the [Page 10] double weakened, the patient was seen to recover strength.”This phenomenon is perfectly intelligible to the Theosophical student, who knows that the etheric double is the vehicle of the life-principle, or vitality, in the physical body, and that its partial withdrawal must therefore diminish the energy, with which this principle plays on the denser molecules. Clairvoyants, such as the Seeress of Prevorst, state that they can see the ethereal arm or leg attached to a body from which the dense limb has been amputated, and D’Assier remarks on this: -

“Whilst I was absorbed in physiological studies, I was often arrested by a singular fact. It sometimes happens that a person who has lost an arm or leg experiences certain sensations at the extremities of the fingers and toes. Physiologists explain this anomaly by postulating in the patient an inversion of sensitiveness or of recollection, which makes him locate in the hand or the foot the sensation with which the nerve of the stump is alone affected …I confess that these explanations seemed to me laboured and have never satisfied me. When I studied the problem of the duplication of man, the question of amputations recurred to my mind, and I asked myself if it was not more simple and logical to attribute the anomaly of which I have spoken to the doubling of the human body, which by its fluid nature can escape amputation” (loc. Cit., p. 103-104).

The etheric double plays a great part in spiritualistic phenomena. Here again the clairvoyant can help us. A clairvoyant can see the etheric double oozing out of the left side of the medium, and it is this which often appears as the “materialised spirit,” easily moulded into various shapes by the thought-currents of the sitters, and gaining strength and vitality as the medium sinks into a deep trance. The Countess Wachtmeister, who is clairvoyant, says she has seen the same [Page 11] “spirit” recognised as that of a near relative or friend by different sitters, each of whom saw it according to his expectations, while to her own eyes it was the mere double of the medium.So again, H.P.Blavatsky told me that when she was at the Eddy homestead, watching the remarkable series of phenomena there produced, she deliberately moulded the “spirit” that appeared into the likenesses of persons known to herself and to no one else present, and the other sitters saw the types which she produced by her own will-power, moulding the plastic matter of the medium’s etheric double. Many of the movements of objects that occur at such séances, and at other times, without visible contact, are due to the action of the etheric double, and the student can learn how to produce such phenomena at will. They are trivial enough: the mere putting out of the etheric hand is no more important than the putting out of the dense counterpart, and neither more or less miraculous. Some persons produce such phenomena unconsciously, mere aimless overturnings of objects, making of noises, and so on: they have no control over their etheric double, and it just blunders about in their near neighbourhood, like a baby trying to walk.For the etheric double, like the dense body, has only a diffused consciousness belonging to its parts, and has no mentality. Nor does it readily serve as a medium of mentality, when disjoined from the dense counterpart. This leads to and interesting point. The centres of sensation are located in the fourth principle, which may be said to form a bridge between the physical organs and the mental perceptions; impressions from [Page 12] the physical universe impinge on the material molecules of the dense physical body, setting in vibration the constituent cells of the organs of sensations, or our “senses”. These vibrations, in their turn, set in motion the finer material molecules of the etheric double, in the corresponding sense organs of its finer matter. From these vibrations pass to the astral body, or fourth principle, presently to be considered, wherein are the corresponding centres of sensation.From these vibrations are again propagated into the yet rarer matter of the lower mental plane, whence they are reflected back until, reaching the material molecules of the cerebral hemispheres, they become our “brain consciousness”. This correlated and unconscious succession is necessary for the normal action of consciousness as we know it. In sleep and in trance, natural or induced, the first two and the last stages are generally omitted, and the impressions start from and return to the astral plane, and thus make no trace on the brain memory; but the natural or trained psychic, the clairvoyant who does not need trance for the exercise of his powers, is able to transfer his consciousness from the physical to the astral plane without losing grip thereof, and can impress the brain-memory with knowledge gained on the astral plane, so retaining it for use.

Death means for the etheric double just what it means for the dense physical body, the breaking up of its constituent parts, the dissipation of its molecules. The vehicle of the vitality that animates the bodily organism as a whole, it oozes forth from the body when the death hour comes, and is seen by the clairvoyant as a violet light, or violet form, hovering over the dying person, still attached to the physical body by [Page 13] the slender thread before spoken of. When the thread snaps, the last breath has quivered outwards, and the bystanders whisper “He is dead”. The etheric double, being of physical matter, remains in the neighbourhood of the corpse, and is the “wraith”, or “apparition”, or “phantom”, sometimes seen at the moment of death and afterwards by persons near the place where the death has occurred. It disintegrates slowly pari passu with its dense counterpart, and its remnants are seen by sensitives in cemeteries and church yards as violet lights hovering over graves. Here is one of the reasons which render cremation preferable to burial as a mode of disposing of the physical enveloped of man; the fire dissipates in a few hours the molecules which would otherwise be set free only in the slow course of gradual putrefaction, and thus quickly restores to their own plane the dense and etheric materials, ready for use once more in the building up of new forms. [Page 14]

PRINCIPLE -3- PRÂNA, THE LIFE

All universes, all worlds, all men, all brutes, all vegetables, all minerals, all molecules and atoms, all that is, are plunged in a great ocean of life, life eternal, life infinite, life incapable of increase or diminution. The universe is only life in manifestation, life made objective, life differentiated. Now each organism, whether minute as a molecule or vast as a universe, may be thought of as appropriating to itself somewhat of life, of embodying, in itself as its own life some of this universal life. Figure a living sponge, stretching itself out in the water which bathes it, envelops it, permeates it; there is water, still the ocean, circulating in every passage, filling every pore; but we may think of the ocean outside the sponge, or of part of the ocean, appropriated by the sponge, distinguishing them in thought if we want to make statements about each severally.So each organism is a sponge bathed in the ocean of life universal, and containing within itself some of that ocean as its own breath of life. In Theosophy we distinguish this appropriated life under the name Prâna, breath, and call it the third principle in man’s constitution. To speak quite accurately, the “breath of life” – that which the Hebrews termed Nephesh, or the breath of life breathed into the nostrils of Adam – is not Prâna only, but Prâna and the fourth principle conjoined. [Page 15] It is these two together that make the “vital spark” (Secret Doctrine, vol. 1., page 262), and that are the “breath of life in man, as in beast or insect, or physical, material life” (Secret Doctrine, vol. 1., note to page 263).It is “the breath of animal life in man – the breath of life instinctual in the animal” (Secret Doctrine, vol. 1., diagram page 262). But just now we are concerned with Prâna only, with vitality as the animating principle in all animal and human bodies. Of this life the etheric double is the vehicle, acting, so to say, as means of communication, as bridge, between Prâna and the dense body.

Prâna is explained in the Secret Doctrine as having for its lowest subdivision the microbes of science; these are the “invisible lives” that build up the physical cells (se ante, page 8-9); these are the “countless myriads of lives” that build the “tabernacle of clay”, the physical bodies (Secret Doctrine vol. 1, page 245). “Science, dimly perceiving the truth, may find bacteria and other infinitesimals in the human body, and see in them only, occasional and abnormal visitors to which diseases are attributed. Occultism – which discerns a life in every atom and molecule, whether in a mineral or human body, in air, fire, or water – affirms that our whole body is built of such lives; the smallest bacterium under the microscope being to them a comparative size like an elephant to the tiniest infusoria” (ibid., p. 245). The “fiery lives” are the controllers and directors of these microbes, these invisible lives, and “indirectly” build, i.e., build by controlling and directing the microbes, the immediate builders, supplying the latter with what is necessary, acting as the life of these lives; the “fiery lives” the synthesis, the essence, of Prâna, are the “vital constructive energy” that enables the [Page 16] microbes to build the physical cells. One of the archaic commentaries sums up the matter in stately and luminous phrases: “The worlds, to the profane, are built up of the known elements. To the conception of an Arhat, these elements are themselves collectively a divine life; distributively, on the plane of manifestations, the numberless and countless crores – ( a crore is ten millions) – of lives. Fire alone is ONE, on the plane of the One Reality; on that of manifested, hence illusive, being, its particles are fiery lives which live and have their being at the expense of every other life that they consume. Therefore they are named the Devourers….Every visible thing in this universe was built by such lives, from conscious and divine primordial man, down to the unconscious agents that construct matter…..From the One Life, formless and uncreate, proceeds the universe of lives (Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, page 269). As in the universe, so in man, and all these countless lives, all this constructive vitality, all this is summed up by the Theosophist as Prâna.[Page 17]

PRINCIPLE -4- THE DESIRE BODY

In building up our man we have now reached the principle sometimes described as the animal soul, in Theosophical parlance Kâma Rûpa, or the desire-body. It belongs to in constitution, and functions on, the second or astral plane. It includes the whole body of appetites, passions, emotions, and desires which come under the head of instincts, sensations, feelings and emotions, in our Western psychological classification, and are dealt with as a subdivision of mind. In Western psychology mind is divided – by the modern school – into three main groups, feelings, will, intellect. Feelings are again divided into sensations and emotions, and these are divided and subdivided under numerous heads. Kâma, or desire, includes the whole group of “feelings”, and might be described as our passional and emotional nature. All animal needs, such as hunger, thirst, sexual desire, come under it; all passions, such as love (in its lower sense), hatred, envy, jealousy. It is the desire for sentient experience, for experience of material joys – “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life”. This principle is the most material in our nature, it is the one that binds us fast to earthly life. “It is not molecularly constituted matter, least of all the human body, Sthula Sharîra, that is the grossest of all our ‘principles’ but verily the middle principle, the real animal centre; whereas our body is [Page 18] but its shell, the irresponsible factor and medium through which the beast in us acts all its life” ( Secret Doctrine, vol. I, p. 280-81).

United to the lower part of Manas, the mind, as Kâma-Manas, it becomes the normal human brain-intelligence, and that aspect of it will be dealt with presently. Considered by itself, it remains the brute in us, the “ape and tiger” of Tennyson, the force which most avails to keep us bound to earth and to stifle in us all higher longings by the illusions of sense.

Kâma joined to Prâna is, as we have seen, the “breath of life,” the vital sentient principle spread over every particle of the body. It is, therefore, the seat of sensation, that which enables the organs of sensation to function. We have already noted that the physical organs of sense, the bodily instruments that come into immediate contact with the external world, are related to the organs of sensation in the etheric double (ante p. 14). But these organs would be incapable of functioning did not Prâna make them vibrant with activity, and their vibrations would remain vibrations only, motion on the material plane of the physical body, did not Kâma, the principle of sensation translate the vibration into feeling. Feeling indeed, is consciousness on the kâmic plane, and when a man is under the dominion of a sensation or a passion, the Theosophist speaks of him as on the kâmic plane, meaning thereby that his consciousness is functioning on that plane.For instance, a tree may reflect rays of light, that is, ethereal vibrations, and these vibrations striking on the outer eye will set up vibrations in the physical nerve-cells; these will be propagated as vibrations to the physical and on to the astral centres, but [Page 19] there is no sight of the tree until the seat of the sensation is reached, and Kâma enables us to perceive.

Matter of the astral plane – including that called elemental essence – is the material of which the desire-body is composed, and it is the peculiar properties of this matter which enable it to serve as the sheath in which the Self can gain experience of sensation. (The constitution of the elemental essence would lead us too far from an elementary treatise). The desire–body, or astral body, as it is often called, has the form of a mere cloudy mass during the earlier stages of evolution, and is incapable of serving as an independent vehicle of consciousness. During deep sleep it escapes from the physical body, but remains near it, and the mind within it is almost as much asleep as the body. It is, however, liable to be affected by forces of the astral plane akin to its own constitution, and gives rise to dreams of a sensuous kind.In a man of average intellectual development the desire-body has become more highly organised, and when separated from the physical body is seen to resemble it is outline and features; even then, however, it is not conscious of its surroundings on the astral plane, but encloses the mind as a shell, within which the mind may actively function, while not yet able to use it as an independent vehicle of consciousness. Only in the highly evolved man does the desire-body become thoroughly organised and vitalised, as much the vehicle of consciousness on the astral plane as the physical body is on the physical plane.

After death, the higher part of man dwells for awhile in the desire-body, the length of its stay depending on the comparative grossness or delicacy of its constituents. When the man escapes from it, it persists for a time as [Page 20] a “shell” and when the departed entity is of a low type, and during earth life infused such mentality as it possessed into the passional nature, some of this remains entangled with the shell. It then possesses consciousness of a very low order, has brute cunning, is without conscience – an altogether objectionable entity, often spoken of as a “spook.” It strays about, attracted to all places in which animal desires are encouraged and satisfied, and is drawn into the currents of those whose animal passions are strong and unbridled. Mediums of low type inevitably attract these eminently undesirable visitors, whose fading vitality is reinforced in their séance rooms, who catch astral reflections, and play the part of “disembodied spirits” of a low order. Nor is this all; if at such a séance there be present some man or woman of correspondingly low development, the spook will be attracted to that person, and may attach itself to him or to her, and thus may be set up currents between the desire-body of the living person and the dying desire-body of the dead person, generating results of the most deplorable kind.

The longer or shorter persistence of the desire-body as a shell or a spook depends on the greater or less development of the animal and passional nature in the dying personality. If during earth-life the animal nature was indulged and allowed to run riot, if the intellectual and spiritual parts of man were neglected or stifled, then, as the life-currents were set strongly in the direction of passion, the desire-body will persist for a long period after the body of the person is dead. Or again, if earth-life has been suddenly cut short by accident or by suicide, the link between Kâma and Prâna will not be easily broken, and the desire-body [Page 21] will be strongly vivified. If, on the other hand, desire has been conquered and bridled during earth-life, if it has been purified and trained into subservience to man’s higher nature, then there is but little to energise the desire-body and it will quickly disintegrate and dissolve away.

There remains one other fate, terrible in its possibilities, which may befall the fourth principle, but it cannot be clearly understood until the fifth principle has been dealt with.[Page 22]